Sick Angelfish

[breannasdad]

I am fairly new to saltwater aquariums and so far it has been going great and my daughter and I have had a great time in the hobby.. However today we came home and I could not find my angelfish. When I did find him, he was hiding under a rock laying on his side. When he came out he would swim either sideways or upside down while curled up. I am not familiar with this and seems to be very odd behavior. I have separated him into a quarantine tank but at this point I don't really know what to do, or what is wrong. Right now he just lays on the bottom and looks like he is trying to curl up into a ball. If anyone has any suggestions etc I would really appreciate it. thanks!

[Bifferwine]

Hi and welcome!

You have 5 damsels and a clown in that tank. Damsels are some of the most aggressive fish out there and will often kill other fish. I'll restate that: damsels almost always kill other fish. I had a blue damsel that would rip apart any corals that I put in his territory. Clowns can also be highly aggressive (depending on the type of clown you have, some are worse than others).

If your water parameters are all normal and good, and you have not noticed any disease, my best guess would be that the angel was getting beat up or stressed by all the damsels you have. Have you seen any signs of aggression?

What are your parameters? What kind of damsels, clown and angel do you have? And how long have you had them? Has the angel been eating?

[breannasdad]

Hey! Thanks for getting back to me! The damsels I have are:

4 blue
1 black neon

the clown is a maroon clown

the angel is a coral beauty

I have had these fish together for the better part of five months. I have noticed that the black neon tends to act aggressive towards the other damsels sometimes. But the angelfish is quite a bit bigger than anyone in the tank and I have never noticed any problems between him and anyone in the tank. They have been fine together for a long time.

The black neon is probably the most aggressive and he gets out of the way for the angel, usually giving up his sleeping spot for the angelfish. As far as the clownfish, he just hangs out in his spot with the gobies and doesn't seem to have any problems at all with anyone.

I have been testing the water regularly and everything has been good with the exception that I had a spike in nitrate a few weeks ago. I did some water changes (the last one about a two weeks ago) and it is down to about 10 ppm.

The angel was eating and cruising around the tank this morning when I left for work and then this afternoon about six I got home and noticed his condition.